Validation of a Work Experience Tool (WEX Tool) within Belgian Public and Private Sectors

Background: In the context of rising psychosocial risks, evolving organizational challenges, and the rapid transformation of the world of work, particular attention must be paid to the development of tools capable of capturing the lived experience of workers. Building on three focus groups and a Delphi method conducted with occupational health professionals involved in supporting work-related issues, we developed a questionnaire assessing nine core dimensions of the work experience: work identity, recognition, collective functioning, values, meaning at work, work organization, work craftsmanship, managerial role, and work centrality. The next phase sought to validate this tool on a sample of workers. The present communication aims to present findings from the validation study conducted within both the public and private sectors in Belgium.
Method: The questionnaire was disseminated online among Belgian workers from the public and private sectors. The quantitative analysis followed four main axes: 1) Analysis of internal consistency through item–total correlations, conducted on the full sample from both sectors. This step enabled us to evaluate the contribution of each item to its respective dimension and to identify items with insufficient coherence. Items showing weak or ambiguous item–total correlations were removed in order to refine the internal structure of the scale. 2) Analysis of internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients), performed on all workers across both sectors. These analyses allowed us to assess the reliability of each subscale. 3) Analysis of convergent validity, carried out separately for the two sectors. The tool was compared with established measures of burnout: the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory (OLBI) for public-sector workers and the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT) for private-sector workers. 4) The factor-analytic procedure was performed to examine the underlying structure of the questionnaire and to further refine the item set. Factor analysis enabled us to verify whether the empirical structure matched the theoretical model of nine dimensions, to identify items with low or cross-loadings, and to reduce redundancy.
Results: Reliability analyses revealed generally high Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, confirming strong internal consistency across most dimensions and subdimensions. In total, on the 142 items, 73 items distributed across the 9 dimensions were retained. Several problematic items
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were identified and removed in order to improve the structure of the tool. Convergent validity was strongly supported. In the private sector, all nine dimensions correlated significantly and negatively with the BAT. In the public sector, significant negative correlations emerged between the tool’s dimensions and both components of the OLBI (exhaustion and disengagement). These results converge toward a robust capacity of the tool to capture key aspects of the work experience associated with burnout risk
Conclusion: The initial quantitative validation analyses indicate that the tool demonstrates promising psychometric properties. Nonetheless, certain methodological limitations call for further research, in particular confirmatory factor analyses and larger, more diverse samples. Overall, the tool already appears to offer a relevant and valuable contribution to assessing work experience and supporting the prevention of psychosocial risks.